Tony Richards - The Astonishing Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in the Twenty-First Century

“There is a method in my madness,” Holmes assured him.

Twilight was closing its grip across the entire town again. The narrow towers to their rear seemed to huddle closer together than before, dusk forming a mesh between them. And the water off in the direction of the typhoon wall was bled of all its colour, so that it seemed like liquid lead. Gaily-hued lanterns glowed upon the Jumbo restaurant, and a few much dimmer yellow lamps showed through portholes in the Floating Village.

No cranes were working at this hour, and the whole enclosure seemed unnaturally quiet.

Even Pang felt slightly unnerved, but his English guest showed none of that.

“Might I borrow one of those hardhats all of your men wear? Holmes asked.

But he was already wearing a hat. Why would he have any need for two? Pang hid his bewilderment, his natural politeness taking over.

“But of course,” he assented. Then he sent one of his men to fetch one.

The detective took the brightly coloured helmet, and proceeded to wander down with it to the very edge of the waterside. Almost the same spot, Pang could see, where the workman with the cigarettes had been attacked the previous night. Holmes removed the deerstalker, holding it in his left hand, and replaced it with the hardhat, which was quite incomprehensible. He practically looked like a giant cigarette himself, his body thin and shadowy, the top of his head bright orange. What exactly was he doing?

Holmes just stood there, gazing out across the water. So Pang cleared his throat.

“Should I … should we … should I fetch some of my strongest men here?”

“There’s no need for any of that. If you could back off into the shadows perhaps, the same way you did yesterday? I do not think you’ll come to any harm.”

Pang felt his larynx tightening as he did as he was told.

And after that, it was just waiting. A ship’s horn sounded, further out to sea. A motorbike went past the fence, its sound making him jump. The night densened and coalesced. The partial moon and a few stars came out.

The great detective made not the slightest move. He was like a statue, confronting the water.

Suddenly, the surface bulged. Pang sucked in a breath, then saw the Englishman was stepping backwards.

Holmes was not running. He was not in any panic. He was simply backing away calmly, giving the frogman proper room to make land.

Once again, hands and arms emerged. A shadowy figure drew itself up, harbour water sluicing from it. It stood crouched for a moment, then it took its first swift step in Holmes’ direction.

The great detective’s only reaction was to yank the orange hardhat from his head, toss it to one side, and then replace it with the deerstalker.

The approaching figure froze.

Pang’s heart was beating so violently by this juncture that it was difficult to hear anything else.

But he thought he could hear his guest calling out, “See? I am not your enemy.”

This was followed up with, “You hate the men in the orange hats, don’t you? And with reason.”

Pang was dumbstruck. What strange way was this of dealing with a violent assassin?

Then his astonishment grew even greater, because Holmes was gesturing to him.

“Come here, Simon. You will not be harmed.”

Was he serious? Mr Pang had to be called several times before he dared to step out of the shadows.

Very tentatively, he approached Holmes’ side. And the thin moonlight gradually revealed more of the crouching figure.

Utter dumbfoundment overtook the owner of the docks. There was no wetsuit he could see. There was no mask!

Standing in front of him was the etiolated figure of a teenaged Chinese boy, completely naked. His skin was as colourless as a fish’s belly. His eyes were large and glassy and his mouth was slack. He had only a few thin snaggles of hair on his head, but they appeared to run halfway down his back. His ribs poked through the flesh around his chest, his stomach section almost hollow. His arms and legs, nonetheless, looked extremely sinewy and strong.

And he had some kind of wound on either side of his scrawny neck.

Then refreshed horror gripped Pang, because he could see the wounds were moving.

This baleful figure stared at them another second. Then it turned away, fled back to the water, and was gone in an explosion of ripples.

Pang felt himself becoming faint. A firm hand steadied him.

“Easy, now,” he heard Holmes say. “It can all be explained.”

Ten minutes later, they were sitting in Pang’s office, the front wall of which was glass and showed most of the docks, most of the span of water. Work was continuing as normal down there. The Goliath of Aberdeen was preparing to set sail.

Holmes had found a blanket and thrown it around his host’s shoulders, since Mr Pang was trembling from shock. He had then fetched hot tea from a nearby machine, even offered to top it up with a little brandy from a flask he’d brought along, but Pang had refused that.

“I still cannot believe the evidence of my own eyes,” the man was saying.

“But the evidence is accurate, and so you must.”

Holmes sat down opposite him, folding both his hands together.

“That poor creature must have been born in the Floating Village. You said it yourself that many of its denizens are birthed and die there, never once touching dry land. I myself observed them swimming in the bay and fetching its water for bathing. And they have lived that way for generations? Hardly surprising, then, that eventually a new mutation would come along. A human being who had no use for dry land whatsoever. Yes, a baby boy with gills.”

“In our modern culture, he would be a mighty curiosity, for certain. But he would be cared for nonetheless. But not amongst the Tanka. We have already seen demonstrated how deeply, primitively superstitious those tribespeople are. Such a child would have been regarded by them with abject horror, as the work of evil spirits perhaps. And so in short, they’d have discarded him. They would have thrown him overboard.”

“But he’d have survived that,” Pang pointed out, his nerves starting to calm.

“Exactly. But what a miserable existence. Ejected from your family and home at such a very early age. Schooled in not the slightest way in human niceties, and forced to eke out your years as an orphaned animal might. He must have learned extremely quickly to keep himself hidden. Able to breathe underwater in a bay as large as this one, that would not have been much of a problem.

“And so he grew into a teenager. A scrawny one who could not speak, but with powerful limbs from all that swimming. I noticed the first time I saw him – even in silhouette – that he was not wearing an air bottle on his back. I noticed too that the tracks he left were not from rubber flippers. They had uneven lines and whorls, were prints. As well as gills, the fellow has webbed feet. And he has lived out there, quite solemnly but peaceably, until two months ago.”

Both of Pang’s eyebrows had come up.

“Until the men with orange hardhats came along. And your people destroyed his home.”

The Goliath of Aberdeen sounded its mighty horn.

“You said you had to dredge part of the bay and deepen it to allow that ship access. You told me that you brought up a great deal of tangled wreckage from the bottom. That was where the boy was living, until your actions drove him out.”

“But how could I have had any idea …?” Pang stammered.

“You couldn’t,” Holmes said flatly. “But the plain fact is, the boy is motivated by blind anger. He seeks revenge. He is an almost primal being, so he will not stop until the matter is resolved, until you make amends.”